AMD has leaked some info on its upcoming Hondo APU, the successor to the brand new Desna APU designed specifically for tablet devices.

Named after Al Bundy’s favourite movie, starring western legend John Wayne, the new Hondo chip will be based on a revised and power optimised Bobcat core and it is aimed at Windows 8 devices. Hondo will deliver superior power efficiency and AMD claims its “app power” with FCH is about 2W and the TDP is under 4.5W. This is a significant improvement over Desna, rated at 4W in app power, with a 5.9W TDP. The new chip will stick to the 40nm process.

Hondo will be part of the new Brazos-T platform and it will feature a new Hudson M2T fusion controller hub, or chipset in Fusionese. The new Hudson M2T is a redesigned Hudson M3 with a power optimized I/O feature set and SDIO support for WiFi. It is smaller than the Hudson M1 (A50M) currently used in the Brazos platform and AMD has done away with some features deemed unnecessary for tablets, thus reducing power consumption to less than 1 watt.

However, in the performance department Hondo will not be a major improvement over Desna chips. It still packs two cores clocked at 1GHz and the same HD 6250 graphics core ticking at 276MHz. This is still more than enough for the tablet market and the new chips should sample by the end of the year, with mass availability scheduled for Q2 2012. Hondo will be replaced by Samara chips sometime in 2013.

A couple of days ago we came across Asus’ first Fusion ITX board and now it’s Sapphire’s turn.

The Pure Fusion Mini E350 has been listed by several e-tailers with prices starting at €129. The board is based around AMD’s E-350 APU at 1.6GHz and Hudson M1 FCH. The APU packs HD 6310 graphics and has an 18W TDP.

The board features two SO-DIMM DDR3 slots, one PCIe x16 slot and one PCIe Mini Card slot. It features two USB 3.0 ports, eSATA 6Gbps, LAN, DVI and HDMI outputs. Internal connectors include 5 SATA 6Gbps ports, four USB 2.0 ports, serial port and Bluetooth is also on board.

According to our info, AMD’s target price for E-350 boards is €129, which doesn’t sound too bad. The E-350 can wipe the floor with any Atom processor, but we hope to see some even cheaper versions over the next few months.

Acer has launched a couple of Aspire laptops based on AMD's new Fusion APUs and we can report that the pricing is rather tempting.

Both models are based on the E-350 APU with Radeon HD 6310 graphics and Hudson D3 Fusion Controller Hub.

The 14-inch 4253 packs 4GB of memory, 320GB of storage, WiFi, gigabit Ethernet and a multitouch touchpad. Best of all, it's priced at just €399, so it's pretty good value for money. The 15.6-inch 5253 features 8GB of memory, which sounds like overkill, and 500GB of storage. It will sell for €499.

There's no word on battery life or weight, but both models seem rather promising, especially in terms of value. Although we already knew what to expect from AMD's new platform in terms of specs, the pricing comes as a pleasant surprise. We can probably expect to see even cheaper incarnations from other vendors shortly.

All upcoming AMD Fusion APUs will have one thing in common, they will share the Hudson Fusion Controller Hub (FCH) and the Hudson will be available in seven distinct variants aimed at three market segments.

Three versions are reserved for AMD's new notebook platforms. All feature support for up to six SATA 6Gbps devices and four second generation PCIe x1 GPPs. Hudson M1 is will take care of Brazos/Ontario. It won't be as feature packed as the rest of the series, so there is no Gigabit Ethernet MAC on board, no RAID support, no VGA DAC and it also lacks USB 3 support.

It does, however, pack 14 USB 2.0 ports and 2 USB 1.1 ports. Hudson M2 and M3 are part of the Sabine platform, based on Llano processors. They pack Gigabit Ethernet, RAID 0 and 1 support and the only major distinction is the inclusion of USB 3.0 support on the M3 variant.

In the desktop segment, AMD will offer three Hudsons primarily aimed at the Lynx platform, but also a limited number of Brazos products. Hudson D1 is reserved for the Value Lynx platform and Brazos ECSD. It lacks SATA 6Gbps support, on board Gigabit Ethernet, RAID, VGA DAC and USB 3.0, which really isn't that surprising as it is a cost effective solution for the low end. Hudson D2 and D3 are aimed at proper Lynx platforms with Llano APUs. They feature practically everything missing from the D1, including RAID 0,1 and 10 modes and apparently DisplayPort support. However, D2 does not have USB 3.0 support and it packs 14 UBS 2.0 ports instead. The D3 has 4 USB 3.0 ports and 10 USB 2.0 ports.

The Hudson E1 is probably the most interesting of the lot, as it's aimed at the power efficient Brazos AES platform. Sadly, it appears that some aspects of its spec are not finalized yet, but it will feature ethernet, SATA 6Gbps, RAID, but it won't have VGA or USB 3.0.

As we said earlier, Hudson FCH will be used with all upcoming AMD FM1 parts, as well as FT1 BGA APUs. It will be an integral part of all upcoming mainstream AMD platforms in 2011 and probably beyond, so get used to it.

AMD's upcoming Llano APU series has been the talk of the town for quite some time, but we lacked quite a few details and much of its spec was in the realm of speculation.

However, now we can start to piece the puzzle together and it appears that the first Llano engineering samples will appear in March 2011. Production should start in June and we can expect availability in early Q3, provided AMD manages to stick to its schedule.

Llano will appear in several distinct versions, starting with three dual-core SKUs with Winterpark DirectX 11 graphics. These parts will have a 65W TDP and at least one of them will appear at a later date, towards the end of Q3. A triple-core version with the Beavercreek DX11 capable GPU will appear launch in Q3, with a 100W TDP. At the top of the pyramid we're looking at two proper quad-cores with Beavercreek graphics and a 100W TDP, both slated for Q3.

Quick reminder, Llano is a Socket FM1 part based on a new 32nm K10.5-derived core codenamed Husky. It will rely on the Hudson D3 Fusion Controller Hub (FCH) to communicate with the outside world and it will support DDR3 up to 1600MHz. The desktop Lynx platform and Llano processors will eventually replace AMD's mainstream lineup based on Callisto, Propus and Rana processors.

The Hudson FCH is a rather interesting piece of technology in its own right and since it will be used with all future AMD APUs we will post the full spec in a separate article.

After Gigabyte released a motherboard based on AMD's new Brazos platform two weeks ago, rivals Jetway have been showing off another board equipped with a Fusion APU (accelerated processing unit).

The Jetway NF81-LF is a mini-ITX motherboard which uses the Hudson-M1 chipset. It has a single-core Ontario chip (the 1.5 GHz E-240 or 1.2 GHz C-30) with Radeon HD 6250 graphics. There are two DDR3-1333 SO-DIMM slots, five SATA ports, one PCI slot, dual Gigabit Ethernet, 5.1 channel audio, and D-Sub, DVI and HDMI outputs.

There is no word on price yet and it appears that the NF81-LF will be aimed at the industrial and commercial segments. It should be out early next year.

Executives from AMD have been seen wining and dining their opposite numbers at Renesas Electronics in a bid to do a licensing deal on USB 3.0 technology. Renesas was merged into NEC and is the only manufacturer to have approval from the USB organisation.

According to Digitimes, AMD wants to integrate USB 3.0 support in its upcoming Hudson D1 southbridge chipsets. Quoting its reporter's typewriter, deep throats in the notebook industry, who it forgets to name, said that AMD is dead keen to get the technology under the bonnet of the new range.

Tthe Hudson D1 chipset will be introduced for AMD's 40nm Ontario APUs that are set to be shipped in the fourth quarter of 2010. The new platform is targeted the ultra-thin notebook and netbook markets.

AMD will launch Llano-based processors for its mainstream desktop and notebook segments in 2011. It seems likely that it wants USB 3.0 support in all of them.

In doing so it will steal the march on Intel. Gigabyte told us at this year's Computex confirmed that Intel's USB 3.0 chipset won't hit vendors or anyone else until 2012.